Month: January 2010

Mark Osler: Schools or Prisons?

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[arnold-schwarzenegger-conan.jpg]I saw this story about CA governor Arnold Schwarzenegger calling for a “Schools not Prisons” politics on the NYT site and thought it warranted a post.  Unfortunately, I’m cramming for Saturday’s Friends of Justice Board meeting and a Sunday preaching opportunity and don’t have time for reflection.  Fortunately, Baylor law professor Mark Osler has addressed the issues over at Osler’s Razor and raises some provocative issues.

Political Mayhem Thursday: Schools or Prisons?

Lame-duck California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger is supporting a Constitutional amendment in that state which would require that the state spend more money every year on universities than it does on prisons.

I think it is an intriguing idea.

First, though, we have to acknowledge that incarcerating a lot of people is probably going to reduce crime, even if we just incarcerate people at random– there simply will be fewer people on the street to commit crimes. Incarcerating a large part of the population does reduce crime.

However, incarcerating a lot of people is an expensive way to achieve what may be a minor result. The better we target the people who really create crime– the key men– the more efficient the system and the fewer people we need to incarcerate to obtain a given result. Of course, for this to happen, we must acknowledge one over-riding goal in criminal justice: To incapacitate the key men. It would be unusual to find that kind of political discipline.

Still, I would love it if we could try, and as a result give more money to universities than we do to prisons.

What do you think?

-Mark Osler

Larry James: Hopelessness vs. Laziness

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Larry James is president and CEO of Central Dallas Ministries.  This brief post on the link between poverty and hopelessness is one of the best things I’ve read in a long while.

Hopelessness vs. Laziness

It occurred to me recently that middleclass and upperclass folks who accuse underclass folks of being lazy don’t really understand life in the ghetto.

When you have little or no hope of landing the kind of job that would allow you, literally, to work your way out of poverty and all of its deadends, a paralysis of hopelessness can set in. When it does, lots of people simply come to a halt. It is as if a wall emerges from the ground in the pathway and the parade of a person’s life simply stops.

Hopelessness may lead to a series of odd jobs; you know, hit and miss kind of work that pays a wage, but not one that’s liveable or progressive.

For lots of people the deadends of life signal an end to effort.

“What’s the use?” can become the fundamental question of life. And, until that question finds a reasonable answer, life is going nowhere.

So, the next time you think “lazy,” stop and reconsider.

Ask some questions.

-Larry James

Prosecutors held to account

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The US Supreme Court agreed to dismiss a suit against two Iowa prosecutors after Pottawattamie County, Iowa signed off on a $12 million settlement with Terry Harrington and Curtis W. McGhee, two men who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of coerced testimony.  Former prosecutors Dave Richter and his assistant Joseph Hrvol had claimed immunity from prosecution but, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, support for this position quickly eroded.

Accroding to the New York Times, “McGhee and Harrington sued, saying that as prosecutors Richter and Hrvol had them arrested without probable cause, coerced and coached witnesses, fabricated evidence against them and concealed evidence that could have cleared them. They claimed authorities were eager to charge someone and that they were targeted because they are black.”

Harrington and McGhee were convicted of killing retired police officer John Schweer at a Council Bluffs car dealership in 1977.  The two men were sentenced to life in prison in 1978.

The picture above shows Terry Herrington with his family after being released from prison.

Supporters of Flowers Bill try again

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(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

Mississippi State Representative Bobby Howell will be re-introducing a bill designed to convict Curtis Flowers of Winona.  A recent article in the Greenwood Commonwealth lays out the basic facts surrounding the case: “Curtis Giovanni Flowers has been tried five times for murder in a 1996 quadruple homicide at Tardy Furniture in Winona with every trial being overturned on appeal or ending in a hung jury.  Howell said he doesn’t think Montgomery County — with a population of about 12,000 — can field a jury of people who don’t already know about the case.”

This is nonsense and Howell knows it.  The challenge isn’t to seat a jury; that can be done with no difficulty at all.  The trick is to seat a jury with lots of white people and few black jurors.  The Mississippi Supreme Court has already rebuked the Grenada DA for attempting, illegally, to keep blacks off the jury in the third Flowers trial.  Interviewed by Tom Mangold of the British Broadcasting Corporation, former Supreme Court Judge Oliver Diaz put it this way: “We reversed because the jury selection process ended up not being fair. Every challenge the state had was used against African Americans and the only African American that was seated was when the state ran out of challenges and could not challenge anymore and one was seated.” (more…)

Mississippi Smoldering

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Tom Mangold, a correspondent with the the British Broadcasting Corporation, recently traveled to Winona, Mississippi to investigate the case of Curtis Flowers.  The story came to his attention through this blog, but I have made little attempt to convince Mr. Mangold to see the story my way.  As you would expect from an investigative reporter, he took nothing for granted going in.  Here is a transcript of Mangold’s report in its entirety.

Mississippi Smoldering

Crossing Continents:  Mississippi

Reporter:  Tom Mangold

Producer:  Bill Law

26 November 2009

In Mississippi, a man accused of murder has spent thirteen years in prison on remand. And he’s still inside.

ATTORNEY RAY CARTER: Curtis is a black man in America, a black man in Mississippi, a black man in the South.

LYDIA CHASSANIOL: There has been an effort by some to say that there was a racial motivation. I would like to remind the people who are interested in this case that there was a black man murdered as well.

REPORTER: Curtis Flowers is a black man charged with the murder of four people, three white and one black. Next year, incredibly, he will face his sixth trial. Race has played a significant part in the judicial stand-off that is preventing justice being done. One year into the Obama presidency what does the Flowers case tell us about the dream of a post-racial America? (more…)